Tech 100: Industry

Annelies Van den Belt-Jansen, Chief Executive, DC Thomson Family History

With managerial experience at News International, the Telegraph Media Group, ITV and SUP Media, a Russian digital publisher, Van den Belt-Jansen joined DC Thomson in 2013 during a reshuffle of the company’s digital properties. She now leads a portfolio of genealogy sites, including findmypast, genesreunited, scotlandspeople and censusrecords.com. In April this year, she was made a non-executive director of the Dutch media company Telegraaf Media Group.

Rab Campbell, Chairman, ScotlandIS; Public Sector Manager, CGI and Chairman of ScotlandIS

With more than 30 years’ experience implementing ICT in education, financial services and the third sector, Campbell established Logica as a key player in the provision of services to the Scottish Government and continues to lead its public sector team in the wake of Logica’s acquisition by Canadian IT and business process outsourcing company CGI. He is also a member of e-Skills Scotland.  

Brendan Dick, Chair, Digital Participation Leadership Group; Director, BT Scotland; Managing Director, BT Regions

A graduate of the University of Edinburgh, his early career was spent in information technology designing, developing and deploying large systems across the UK. An Honorary President of the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations, recent past Chair of Scottish Business in the Community, Vice Chair of the Scottish Council for Development and Industry, he is also a CBI Scotland Council member. BT has committed £125m to the rollout of superfast broadband in Scotland.

New Gerry Docherty, Chair, ICT and Digital Technologies Skills Group; Chief Executive, Smarter Grid Solutions

Docherty has held senior posts with Real Time Engineering, YARD Ltd, CAP Scientific and, latterly, SEMA Group. He has also held senior advisory positions ranging from Chairman of the Scottish Software Federation and ScotlandIS, Director of Scotland the Brand and currently is a member of Scottish Enterprise's Technology Advisory Group.

New Gavin Dutch, Chief Executive, Kotikan

An Edinburgh University graduate, Dutch has worked in mobile application development since 2005. Since founding Kotikan in 2007, its revenue and team size has doubled each year and it is now one of the UK’s leading app development agencies, producing apps for Skyscanner, ScotRail and the BFI London Film Festival. At this year’s ScotlandIS Digital Technology Awards, Kotikan won the category for Outstanding Performance in Business Growth.

David Farquhar, Chair, Industrial Advisory Board, and Honorary Lecturer, School of Computing, University of Dundee; Chief Executive, Workplace Systems

An entrepreneur with a record of delivering shareholder value through international growth in the ICT sector. In the past 20 years he has completed many transactions as a founder/CEO, angel investor and business mentor, including risk capital investments (VC and angel), acquisitions and trade sales in Europe, North America and Asia. “I have started 12 companies, sold six and I have the hard-won experience of having lost two.”

New David Ferguson, Chief Executive, Nucleus Financial

Self-confessed geek, Ferguson began his career training as an actuary with Life Association of Scotland before stints with Ivory & Sime, Scottish Life International and strategic consultancy The Abacus. Convinced that investors could be better served, he embarked on a mission to create the UK’s first crowd-funded and “genuinely collaborative platform” that combines a client’s investments into a single manageable account. Nucleus was this year’s ScotlandIS Digital Technology Awards’ winner for Innovation within Financial Services.

New Jeanette Forbes, Chief Executive, PCL Group

Forbes set up her own company in 2000 after she was made redundant during a downturn in the oil and gas industry; today it is a global IT service provider to the offshore, marine, commercial and industrial sectors. Earlier this year, Forbes was appointed to the board of the Scottish Government’s Digital Scotland Business Excellence Partnership, set up to support Scotland’s goal of becoming a world-class digital nation by 2020.

New Chris Forrest, Director, Microsoft Scotland

A former British army helicopter pilot, Forrest previously worked for Oracle before joining Microsoft in 2000. After spells with Avanade and Vmware, he returned to Microsoft and became Head of Financial Services in 2012. Today, he combines that role with Director of Microsoft in Scotland, where it has been working with the Scottish Government to enable mobile working and to support technology apprenticeships.

Richard Higgs, Chief Executive, Brightsolid Online Technology

Dundee-based media company DC Thomson split its Brightsolid Group in two last year, appointing Higgs as Chief Executive of its data centre business. Higgs joined Brightsolid in 2010 as Managing Director and has been instrumental in making its online technology a dynamic IT player. He was previously Chief Executive of Active Risk Group, a developer of enterprise risk management applications which floated in 2005.

John Innes, Technology investor

One time guitar player in an 80s New Romantic band, Innes has more than 20 years’ experience in the oil and gas and ICT sectors. He led the management buyout of Amor in 2009 and the business delivered year-on-year earnings and employee growth. Last September, Lockheed Martin, the US aerospace giant, bought Amor, creating around 20 millionaires within its ranks. Innes stayed as a consultant until early this year and is now looking at investments in biotech and big data. He was among 200 business people who put their names to a letter supporting Scottish independence.

Alison McLaughlin, Member, Digital Participation Leadership Group; Head of Public Sector, Industry & Services, Sopra Group

McLaughlin leads Sopra’s work in the public sector across the UK from her base in Edinburgh. She has focused on digital services for the public sector for more than 15 years, with experience spanning central and local government, justice, health and the third sector. With her mantra of “work hard, have fun and make a difference”, she has been key to Sopra’s sustained success in the sector in Scotland and continued growth in England and Northern Ireland. McLaughlin is part of the group established to steer the digital participation agenda.

Donald McLaughlin, Board member, e-Skills UK; Director, UKI Collaboration Sales & County Manager, Scotland, Cisco Systems

A big year for McLaughlin with Cisco as the official network infrastructure supporter of the Glasgow Commonwealth Games. A former board member of ScotlandIS, McLaughlin has been in the ICT industry for more than 25 years and has worked with many private and public sector organisations throughout Scotland and across the UK and Ireland.

Angus MacSween, Chief Executive, iomart Group

MacSween has established iomart as one of the major providers of cloud and managed hosting services to UK business. He has overseen the tripling of its market capitalisation to £300m in the last three years and has taken the group onto the UK Government’s G Cloud procurement register. With 320 staff working across eight UK data centres and six offices, iomart was voted the AIM Mid-sized PLC of the Year at the inaugural Scottish Corporate Awards. In July, the company turned down two takeover bids but is said still to be a target.

Alan Moffat, Chairman, Scottish Information Assurance Forum; Director of Services, Sapphire

As founder of the Scottish Information Assurance Forum (SIAF), Moffat’s career spans more than 30 years in information security and ten years in management profiling. He was previously Managing Director of RSC2 Solutions, Head of ICT at Strathclyde Fire and Rescue, IT Manager at Strathclyde Police and a Senior Systems Analyst at the Scottish Criminal Records Office. As part of his new role as Director of Services with Sapphire, Moffat has been helping business and organisations to develop a security strategy.

New Ed Molyneux, Chief Executive, FreeAgent

Former RAF pilot Molyneux moved into IT consultancy and met future FreeAgent co-founders Olly Headey and Roan Lavery who shared his exasperation at the lack of hassle-free accounting systems for freelancers. The company was joint winner of the ScotlandIS Small Digital Company of the Year Award in 2013, along with FanDuel, and was outright winner again this year for “disrupting the accounting services market [and] a rapidly expanding customer base with exceptional retention rates”.

Maggie Morrison, Director, Public Sector and Open Digital Services Centre, CGI

A former HP and Cisco executive, Morrison joined CGI in January, leading a team to grow its presence and public sector business here as the company invests in the establishment of a digital services centre creating 250 skilled jobs in Glasgow. She also serves on the boards of Skills Development Scotland, e-skills Scotland, West College Scotland and is a member of the Scotland 2020 Climate Group and SCDI’s executive committee.

New Keith Neilson, Chief Executive, Craneware

Along with co-founder and chief technology officer Gordon Craig, Neilson has built Craneware into a significant player in the US healthcare billing and audit software market. Over the summer, it bought Scottish mobile technology company Kestros for £1.25m and was this year named Digital Technology Company of the Year in the annual ScotlandIS Awards “in recognition of their inspiring performance and impressive ability to transform financial administration in the US health market”.

Alastair O’Brien, Deputy Chair, ScotlandIS; Board Member, TechUK; Director, Public Services Sector, Lockheed Martin

Instrumental in the establishment of Amor Group as a leading player in public services in Scotland, after its takeover by Lockheed Martin he remained to lead its public services team. He recently urged the industry to focus more on the citizen: “We must change the rules of the ‘game’, let’s agree on the results of a programme, the benefits, the savings, rather than the inputs/the number of licences, the volume discounts, etc. Let’s agree to be paid on the percentage savings that our offerings deliver – that would be a wonderful message to give to our beleaguered public sector customers.”

Polly Purvis, Executive Director, ScotlandIS

Formerly with the Royal Bank of Scotland in the City, Purvis joined the Scottish Development Agency’s small business division becoming Director of Scottish Enterprise Edinburgh & Lothian’s Company Growth Division. After a period in management consultancy, Purvis moved to the Scottish Software Federation and was engaged in the merger which created ScotlandIS. Purvis represents ScotlandIS on the Digital Excellence Business Excellence Partnership, the e-skills UK Scotland board, the Aspekt board at Edinburgh School of Informatics, the ICT Skills Group, the Industrial Advisory Board of the University of Dundee's School of Computing and is a director of dotScot Registry.

New Mark Robinson, Chief Executive, deltaDNA

With more than 15 years’ data mining experience, across companies such as Heineken, Office Depot, Aviva and Unibet, Robinson led data mining consultancy Marketing Databasics until it was acquired by the Indicia Group where he was client services director before leaving to co-found deltaDNA in 2010. Fascinated by the potential of big data and games, Robinson has applied CRM techniques and business thinking from other markets to explore how analytics can change the games industry. deltaDNA were winners of the 2014 Best New Product in the ScotlandIS Digital Technology Awards.

New Cally Russell, Chief Executive, Mallzee

Former mobile phone salesman and PR, Russell founded Mallzee – “the personal shopper in your pocket” – in 2012. Since then his business has garnered awards, funding and users across the world. Mallzee searches more than 100 retailers and offers results based on learning the user’s preferences, which can be tweaked by friends’ opinions, and has the option to save choices and receive alerts when the price drops. Featured as a ‘Best New App’ by Apple earlier this month, it was also winner of The Best Newcomer category at the 2014 Scottish Technology Awards.

New Kenny Shaw, Director, Screenmedia

The former director of interactive at WarkClements Film & Television, Shaw set up Screenmedia in 2004 when WarkClements merged with Ideal World. Since then, he’s built the company into a Bafta award-winning digital design practice working at the forefront of design and technology for web, mobile and tablet platforms. Reinvesting profits from a successful fitness app into mobile technology and design expertise led to it being named 2014 Digital Agency of the Year.

Caroline Stuart, Board member, e-Skills UK Scotland; Board member, ScotlandIS; Director, Oracle Scotland

After graduating in Technology and Business Studies from Strathclyde University in1986, Stuart left Scotland to work in the City of London. She trained as an Investment Analyst and worked for Crown Agents and Charterhouse Bank. She returned to Scotland and ran three small companies before moving into business consultancy. She was a volunteer business adviser for the Prince’s Scottish Youth Business Trust for 10 years. As Director of Oracle Scotland, her expertise is in cloud computing, shared services and organisational transformation. She is keen to encourage the uptake of computer science, particularly among girls.

Laurence Ward, Chair, Technology Advisory Group; Senior Partner Scotland, CMS Cameron McKenna

Ward became Senior Partner Scotland following the merger of CMS and Dundas & Wilson. Prior to that he was Chairman of Dundas & Wilson and led its outsourcing and its IP/IT practice for 17 years. He has a wealth of experience advising large public and private sector clients on complex, high value and strategically important ICT and other commercial transactions. As chair of the Technology Advisory Group, he is involved in developing the industry strategy. Ward was lead partner in the procurement of the Scottish Wide Area Network and in Glasgow Council’s establishment of a £265m joint venture with Serco to transform IT and property services in the city.